Standardized testing should be optional

Standardized tests, although cumbersome, have been a part of the Connecticut education experience since the Connecticut Mastery Test in fourth grade. With high school comes ACTs or SATs - and all the planning and stress attached to them.

According to some of the most prominent college admissions officials, the SATs and ACTs may now become optional in many schools. That is one of the best moves that schools can make for bettering education. Not taking the test could help numerous students who are not gifted with standardized test-taking ability, while taking it could help others who may have slacked off throughout high school and need a chance to redeem themselves. Optional standardized testing would help both groups of students.

Bates College in Maine, Lawrence University in Wisconsin and Smith College in Massachusetts, among others, have already made the SAT and ACT optional. The New York Times reported that the trend is growing and more institutions could make admissions decisions sans-standardized tests.

Some students have high grade point averages, an extensive list of extracurricular activities and numerous volunteer hours, but only a mediocre SAT score. The fact is that some people just aren't good at taking standardized tests. While there are people who receive higher scores after taking SAT night classes and absorbing the roots of Latin words while balancing a geometry book in the other hand, there remain other students who simply can't get a high score for whatever reason. Allowing some students to opt out of the SATs could give them a chance to show that they are diligent and intelligent by looking at other scholastic measures throughout their high school career.

Other students need the SAT to save face come senior year when they realize, just before it is too late, that it is probably a good time to start doing work and get their act together so they can get into college. Some of these students may naturally score very high on a standardized test. There are plenty of students who are simply not challenged enough in school, so they don't apply themselves. The SAT or ACT can give those students a chance to show that they do, in fact, have the intellectual capacity to get into college and actually succeed.

There are other cases where students may have applied themselves but their grade point averages have suffered because of other factors. Sometimes an illness, family death or a breakup with a significant other may affect someone's life enough to lower their GPA. The SATs in that case can give students a chance to redeem themselves.

Nevertheless, the SATs are currently required for college admission in the majority of schools around the country, including UConn. The advantage is that there is a test that is virtually the same for everyone with scores that can supposedly assess intelligence on a concurrent level for students who attend schools of varying levels of difficulty. However, high schools do not differ significantly enough that one is taught at a college level and the other still focuses on material taught in junior high.

There is basically a standard curriculum in all high schools. Everyone at some point takes math, English, history, science and language courses. Students' transcripts show advanced placement credits and the level of classes they took. That is enough to assess if a school is an appropriate choice for a student.

There are ways to judge students and evaluate intelligence without forcing them to take a standardized test. SATs and ACTs should be optional for admission at every college and university. Students are graded on everything else in their academic career; they don't need anything else to worry about while applying to college.